I've been creating wireframes, flow charts, and final UI visuals for years and I decided to challenge myself with this project and gain experience and understanding of what is involved in designing a full UX experience to help strengthen my visual design and UI work.

As a person that practices meditation I wanted an app that allowed me to customize my sessions and offered several different types of meditation. In my search for such an app everything I turned up seemed somewhat limiting.

I started off by researching already existing meditation apps along with a language learning app (Duolingo) and a mobile game (Bejewled Stars) that both had concepts for getting users to return daily. Then I conducted user research with people that either have tried meditation or have tried using meditation apps. I found that many of them were interested in meditation, but could not find an app that stuck or the time to meditate in their already hectic lifestyle.

These findings were then put into an affinity map and I was able to separate features that I had initially had in mind for a product and features that each participant suggested would help them be interested in a meditation product.

From the affinity map I was able to learn that what I thought might have been good ideas for an app weren't exactly what others wanted as well. Taking the most popular suggestions and needs I was able to create personas, a storyboard, feature list, and determine what could realistically be provided in an MVP.

At this point I was able to start creating a user flow from which I could start lo-fi wireframing for initial paper prototypes and another round of research before moving onto a med-fi wireframes for a clickable prototype.

One of the initial revisions on my flowchart was due to the number of clicks it took someone to login to the app and start meditating. Trying to solve this issue was something that ended up driving the rest of the design and how users would interact with the app in general.

Once a clickable prototype was developed I went back to some of the original group of user research participants for some testing, to determine whether or not this new app would provide them the resources to give meditation another try and stick with it.

Based on the scenarios I wrote up, the feedback was positive and I decided I could move forward in creating full visual designs and a final user interface. I also developed a clickthrough video (seen up top) to provide an example of how a user would interact with the app on a daily basis.

This project taught me a lot about the full process of designing for the user and understanding the process involved in making a product that will help make someone's life easier from day to day. Most of my previous experience was in crafting the visual content on products, so I believe that what it takes to get to that point is important in developing an even stronger overall design no matter what step you are involved in. Knowing this process will strengthen my design skills in creating prototypes, wireframes, and visual content for any type of product.